Parallels Desktop 1.0 for Mac OS X

If you want to run Windows (or Linux) on your Intel Mac, but don't want to …

Benchmarks vs. Boot Camp

Now for the real showdown. Keep in mind that Boot Camp already has an advantage since it uses both cores within Windows XP. I won't be benchmarking with Virtual PC and if you're wondering what the speed is like compared to say, a dual G5 running VPC 7 and Parallels, here's an illustrated summary:

Virtual PC on a 2 GHz G5

Parallels on a 2 GHz MacBook Pro

Yes, it's that much faster. Really though, it's like comparing a P3 200 covered in molasses to a 2 GHz Core Solo (since it only uses one core). You can't really compare the two, unless you're really fond of molasses.

Sisoft Sandra 2007 Lite Results

The SiSoft Sandra results were about what we expected. Emulation was a bit slower than running "native" via Boot Camp. Interestingly, the memory bandwidth test wouldn't give correct results, as SiSoft Sandra reported that integer calculations were about 10 times faster than Boot Camp or the Dell laptop while floating point was about 800 times faster!

Cinebench

The OpenGL speedup score reinforces that Parallels is not for gaming since the hardware rendering is slower than software is. The single core render score is a little confusing though since it's showing that it's faster with one core than with both in Boot Camp. That's definitely an error.

PSBench

Each program was given around 900 MB RAM total and history was set to 1.

It seems that the lack of another core is really slowing Photoshop down in Parallels as most times are about twice as long. There are more things to consider than just the one core missing but overall those scores are still respectable. If you intend to do CPU-bound operations in Parallels and aren't in need of full juice, you'll be very happy with Parallels, especially if you've been running MolemanPC 7 on a G5 or less.

Stability

There were stability issues in the earlier betas of Parallels but the 1.0 release is solid. Try as I might, I couldn't get Parallels to kernel panic. I ran Azureus and a bunch of things with both instances running and doing heavy I/O. I even started the Vista download from inside XP and saved to the shared download folder. Switched to full screen. I swore at it in Japanese and did a funny dance, but still nothing. The Parallels application itself did crash a couple times over the past week but it wasn't anything consistent and it never resulted in any sort of corruption of the contained OS's files.

Just note that it's not recommended that you run two copies of the same VM at once since it can corrupt the VM's internal drive data. I tried to see what would happen but both copies of Windows became really unresponsive so I just quit one of them. But for a moment there, I was really living on the edge.

Otherwise, application stability is fine and just as it would be running in Boot Camp. There were no instances other than in the hardware 3-D apps where the program seemed to be running on anything less than the real thing. Coca-Cola.

Parallels gripes and feature requests

Aside from the limited USB device handling and multicore options, my only other major request is for DVD/CD writer support. Burners are seen as read-only devices within the VM, so burning those cursed proprietary disk images (die .mdf) will still require a reboot or terminal-based conversion apps that only half work.

Another smaller thing is that if you've deleted a VM in the Finder, you can't delete it from the Parallels recent VM list, leaving a dead VM listed indefinitely. That's probably not a big deal for most people but if you play with a bunch of VMs and trash them, it gets a bit annoying that you have to keep seeing them.

My failed Ubuntu Server install, a moved Ubuntu home install and a deleted XP make for bad housekeeping.

Finally, it would be good if different instances of the app could have a distinct name for the contained VM. They are all just listed as “Parallels Desktop” so you're not sure which one you're switching to if you're using command-tab or whatever. Definitely a job for Exposé but it's still a problem if the window is hidden.

That's the list. As much as I think it would be great to add faster 3-D and DirectX 9 support to Parallels, I only think it makes sense if the Parallels team can get Windows Vista running acceptably with the schmaltzy bits turned on. Otherwise, it's just a bit better than the current implementation, which suffices for basic 3-D needs like converting a model format.